​Surveillance watchdog ‘was not personally aware’ of bulk NSA spying

Protesters dressed up in costumes representing U.S. President Barack Obama and an National Security Agency agent rally in front of the U.S. Capitol building during the Stop Watching Us Rally protesting surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency (AFP Photo / Allison Shelley) / AFP

A Pentagon watchdog charged with oversight of the National Security Agency said he was “not aware” of its bulk phone records collection until it was exposed in June. Furthermore, he said his office is not investigating the agency's surveillance policies.

Anthony C. Thomas, the deputy Defense Department inspector
general for intelligence and special program assessments, told
reporters at the Pentagon that he “can’t quantify” how
much oversight he conducts in regard to the NSA.

“The bulk of that is in reviews that we have done, and in the
collaborative work that we have done with the NSA [inspector
general],” Thomas said, according to the Guardian.

“From my own personal knowledge, those programs, in and of
themselves, I was not personally aware,” Thomas said.

Since June – when news outlets first published proof of the
agency’s vast domestic phone records collection program based on
material leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden – US
officials have repeatedly assured the public and lawmakers that
the NSA’s sprawling, global surveillance empire came with proper
safeguards and adequate oversight, including from the Pentagon’s
inspector general.

Thomas said he’s able to see the NSA’s own “plans” for
reviews and investigations through defense-associated
intelligence inspectors general forums.

“That doesn’t mean that the DOD IG is saying: ‘well, if you
look at that, we won’t look at that.’ Certainly not, but it’s
more of an ongoing relationship … a constant discussion,”
Thomas said.

“If the NSA IG is looking into something and we feel that
their reporting, their investigation is ongoing, we’ll wait to
see what they find or what they don’t find, and that may dictate
something that we may do. In the course of a planning process, we
may get a hotline [call], or we may get some complaint that may
dictate an action that we may or not take,” Thomas added.

As for bulk surveillance, Thomas said he does not have an open
investigation, as he is “waiting to see the information that
the NSA IG brings forward with the investigations that are going
on, and what we often do not want to do is conflict.”

Thomas added Tuesday that he would have listened to Snowden’s
concerns about the scale of NSA spying had the whistleblower
contacted his office.

“If Edward Snowden had called our hotline, there would have
been a robust look at his allegations,” Thomas said.

Snowden has said that he had no faith in the internal reporting
system before he leaked the classified documents to the Guardian
and The Washington Post, believing his concerns “would have
been buried forever,” leaving him “discredited and
ruined.”

“The system does not work,” Snowden told The New York
Times in October. “You have to report wrongdoing to those
most responsible for it.”

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines would not answer questions regarding
any NSA reviews or investigations by the agency’s Office of the
Inspector General.

“The NSA OIG does not comment on investigations or reviews
that it has opened. The Office does have a division dedicated to
intelligence oversight, and it does have reporting obligations to
the Congress and the President’s Intelligence Oversight
Board,” Vines said, according to the Guardian.

Shortly after Thomas’ comments at the Pentagon, the Washington
Post – citing Snowden documents – wrote that the US-administered
surveillance program MYSTIC is capable of recording “100
percent” of the contents of each and every phone call in a
foreign country.

MYSTIC and its “retrospective retrieval” tool known as
RETRO can store “billions” of phone discussions for 30
days, and the oldest conversations are purged as new ones are
logged. Once the content enters the NSA’s system, however,
analysts are able to go back and listen in as much as a month
later to find information on a person who might never have been
suspected of a crime at the time that their initial conversation
was collected, unbeknownst to them, by the US government.

Since the first Snowden-fueled revelations appeared in June, US
officials have maintained that the NSA is properly overseen, like
any other federal agency.

In October, before the House intelligence committee, outgoing NSA
director Keith Alexander ran through the various watchdogs in his
universe, including that of the Defense Department.

“The [office of the Director of National Intelligence] has an
inspector general and a general counsel that also oversees what
we’re doing,” he said. “The Department of Defense has a
general counsel and an inspector general that oversees what we’re
doing. And the Department of Justice, their national security
division, oversees what we’re doing and works with us in the
court and the White House.”

President Obama vowed some reform to US surveillance operations
in January, though it is unclear if any actual substantive change
will occur.